Richard Falk chased by pro-Israel UN Watch

On November 10, 2011 – the UN Watch website blasted Richard Falk for posting a hilarious poem in reponse to Israel-Firster Alan Dershowitz’s slanderous article in Zeoconservative mouthpiece, New Republic. Alan Dershowitz had criticized both Richard Falk and John J. Mearsheimer for endorsing Israel-born British author Gilad Atzmon’s book The Wondering Who.

The Geneva-based UN Watch, which claims to monitor United Nations on human rights violations – is one of many propaganda arms for American Jewish Committee (AJC) and Israeli Likud Party. According to a group that tracks organizations which influence US foreign policy, Right Web (December 1, 2011), the UN Watch is funded by AJC ($1.8 million between 2002-2007), Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri) an Israeli Hasbara project, Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum, etc. Israel-Firsters Daniel Pipes, Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol have used UN Watch’s office in Geneva.

The UN Watch was established in 1993 by Morris B. Abram (died 2000), the former US permanent representative to United Nations in Geneva. Alfred H. Moses, former Jewish ambassador to Romania and honorary AJC president is chairman of UN Watch. AJC Executive Director David A. Harris serves as co-chair of UN Watch together with Per Ahlmark of Sweden and Hillel C. Neuer as executive director.

Much of the UN Watch’s work involves critiquing criticism of Israel expressed by members of the UN Human Rights Council and promoting hardline views toward Islamic countries. This frequently entails campaigns against the inclusion of anti-Israel countries on the council, including recent initiatives against Syria under Bashar al-Assad and Libya under the late Muammar Qaddafi.

On December 31, 2009 – The UN Watch called on UN chief Ban Ki-Moon to remove professor Richard Falk for breaching his mandate for calling world sanctions against Israel and compared Israeli Jews to Nazis.

On February 4, 2011 – The UN Watch posted its displeasure at Richard Falk being a keynote speaker at the University of Iowa symposium entitled ‘Ten Years After 9/11: Rethinking Counterterrorism‘.

On March 21, 2011 – the UN Watch slammed Richard Falk for endorsing that “9/11 official story” has several defaults on Dr. Kevin Barrett’s Truth Jihad radio talk-show.

On July 6, its website claimed “Washington endorses UN Watch’s call to fire Richard Falk“. Why? Because, professor Richard Falk, who claims to have Jewish family roots, posted a cartoon during NATO invasion of Libya. The cartoon depicted a dog wearing a shirt labeled “USA” and a yarmulke marked with a Star of Zion devouring a bloody human carcass. Lady Justice stands by blindfolded, holding the dog’s leash as it urinates on her feet. The accompanied article claimed that Israel Lobby was behind the so-called ‘Qaddafi’s human violations’.

Later, on July 14, 2011 – the website took credit for UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay’s “unprecedented statement about one of human right’s own official, describing a caricature posted on his personal blog as “objectionable” and “anti-Semitic“.

On June 5, 2009 – the UN Watch claimed that Richard Falk may not be Jewish for equating Israeli abuse of Palestinians as ‘Holocaust’. Richard Falk wrote in June 2007:

“It is especially painful for me, as an American Jew, to feel compelled to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel through a reliance on such an inflammatory metaphor as ‘holocaust.’ The word is derived from the Greek holos (meaning ‘completely’) and kaustos (meaning ‘burnt’), and was used in ancient Greece to refer to the complete burning of a sacrificial offering to a divinity. Because such a background implies a religious undertaking, there is some inclination in Jewish literature to prefer the Hebrew word ‘Shoah’ that can be translated roughly as ‘calamity,’ and was the name given to the 1985 epic nine-hour narration of the Nazi experience by the French filmmaker, Claude Lanzmann. The Germans themselves were more antiseptic in their designation, officially naming their undertaking as the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Qestion.’ The label is, of course, inaccurate as a variety of non-Jewish identities were also targets of this genocidal assault, including the Roma and Sinti(‘gypsies), Jehovah Witnesses, gays, disabled persons, political opponents.”